The discoveries of two more dead whales – one in Andros and the other in Abaco – have strengthened calls for the government to put a stop to testing in the Tongue of the Ocean, at least until it can be determined what is behind the deaths of five whales in the Family Islands in less than two months.
It’s a call that Margo Blackwell, director of the Bahamas Environmental Resource Centre in Andros reiterated yesterday, after examining the third whale to wash ashore miles from the AUTEC base in Andros since late February.
“There isn’t a soul who has seen [us] that hasn’t been like when is this going to stop and what are we going to do about it? But then there’s been an equal amount of, ‘they ain’t going to do nothing, ain’t nothin’ going to happen’ and that makes me very dismayed,” Mrs. Blackwell told The Bahama Journal.
“This is 40 years and we still don’t have any answers. We still don’t have any information and anything that may be important for us to consider is classified or out of our reach.”
The latest whale to wash ashore in Andros was a 17ft beaked whale found on Saturday at Big Wood Cay, which sits at the edge of the Tongue of the Ocean and is the same uninhabited area where another beaked whale was found about two weeks ago.
That discovery prompted Marine Resources Minister Leslie Miller to call for a meeting with AUTEC officials – expected to take place in the next few weeks – and followed the standing of a massive sperm whale 10 miles south of Big Wood Cay, just over a month before.
While fisheries experts acknowledge that similar strandings are taking place in other parts of the world, they fear that the recent strandings are too frequent to be a coincidence.
However, Deputy Chief of Missions at the U.S. Embassy Dr. Brent Hardt has assured that AUTEC has nothing to hide and takes special care to safeguard sea life and mammals in the testing range.
Abaco fisheries officer, Carol Laing, told The Bahama Journal yesterday that while a preliminary examination has been conducted on the 20-ft sperm whale that washed ashore on Carlton Point last Tuesday, the badly mangled carcass was too far gone for testing.
Mr. Laing said the stranding of the sperm whale, which was covered in shark bites and its tail missing, has also raised concern among a lot of the island’s residents, who saw a series of whale and dolphin strandings in 2000. Those strandings were later found to be caused by U.S. Navy sonar testing in the area.
“Everybody’s up in arms about it, especially the tourists because this is a resort area. The local people are just finding out it and are very curious about and are going out [to see the whale and] taking school kids to see it,” said Mr. Laing, who said an official report on the sperm whale was being put together and would be sent to New Providence.
The discovery of the sperm whale marks the second whale death in the Abacos since late February, when a smaller unknown species of whale was found dead in waters near Grand Cay.
Monica Arso of the Bahamas Marine Mammal Survey in Sandy Point, Abaco, who was among a team that examined the sperm whale over the weekend, said that while it was not possible to tell what caused the whale’s death, it was obvious that it did not die from something like a boat’s propeller.
She said the whale was found dead in waters off Treasure Cay by Charles Adams, a marine biologist who lives in the area, and about two hours later the carcass washed ashore.
The remains measured about 19ft in length, but Ms. Arso estimates that its full length, before the tail was lost, was about 25ft.
“[The carcass] was in a really bad state. There were big shark bites on the stomach and the tail was missing,” Ms. Arso told The Bahama Journal.
In the meantime, Mrs. Blackwell is hoping that samples collected from the beaked whale that was found on Saturday will provide some insight into what is causing the whale deaths, at least in Andros.
It was unclear yesterday if these two most recent whale deaths were connected.
“We cannot sit still and continue to be ignorant because everything that we knew in our own generation and over four generations has been diminishing,” said Mrs. Blackwell. “Yes, that’s a condition of the world, but let’s look at what’s causing it.”
By: Erica Wells, The Bahama Journal
